


Give Me the Chance to Miss You

by parchment



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Drug Use, M/M, TW: Drugs, Teenlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 10:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2846990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parchment/pseuds/parchment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Escaping his house at Christmas wasn't supposed to be like this.</p><p>It wasn't supposed to end like that.</p><p>Sherlock can't even remember his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me the Chance to Miss You

**Author's Note:**

> for Lena

“How old are you?”

Sherlock glances around. The alley’s dark, dank, and a million other adjectives that he’s slowly grown used to, his fingers are slowly losing feeling because he forgot his gloves, again, and he left his last pack of cigarettes in his second from the bottom dresser drawer.

He doesn’t have time for this.

He straightens his back, tilting his head at a calculated angle that feels almost natural at this point, looking up through his lashes with a small smile.

“Twenty-two.”

The bouncer narrows his eyes, scanning his body quickly, like it’ll give him away. Sherlock keeps his limbs loose, and gaze steady, even though his fingers are feeling twitchy and he can feel the ever-present, inescapable jumpiness making its home in his legs.

“Come on,” he says, letting a whine saturate his voice, tilting his head up. “My boyfriend’s waiting.”

The man - mid-thirties, poodle owner, married for two years, hasn’t slept in three, no, four days, chronic insomniac -  lets out a harsh breath, shifting from one foot to the next. His eyes dart around the surrounding area, and Sherlock tries to stifle the wave of adrenaline his victory wrought.

“Fine.”

Sherlock grins, and leans in, planting a firm kiss on the man’s cheek, using the movement to drag himself through the narrow doorway.

“Get some sleep,” he tosses over his shoulder, and then suddenly he can’t even hear himself _think_ let alone talk as the pulsing music envelopes him. A shark grin spreads over his face, and his eyes slide shut momentarily.

It’s some shitty techno music tonight, but it’s loud enough that the only thing that matters is the tempo shaking the walls. He manoeuvres his way toward the only seats in the area, pausing a moment to jump in time with a group of women drunk enough to try to cop a feel and smile at a man standing along the wall whose eyes were sitting heavy on Sherlock’s back.

When he finally makes it to the bar, a petite girl immediately sidles up to him, wrapping a slim arm around his waist. Her nose nuzzles his neck, and the air around Sherlock is dense with the scent of liquor.

Sherlock’s about to slip away when he hears a soft laugh, distinguishable even over the horrible music and slurring voice whispering in his ear.

Lestrade’s wiping down the bar in front of him, his laugh growing a little louder as the girl’s other hand slips around to settle on his arse.

“Darling, I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” Lestrade says, voice so used to the noise that it couldn’t even be qualified as shouting.

“What the hell?” she asks, and Sherlock tugs her hand away, joining along with Lestrade’s laugh because it’s always been really contagious.

“I’m gay,” he shouts into her ear. She’s wearing a perfume Sherlock recognises from the shops he went to to buy a gift for Lestrade he wouldn’t feel guilty accepting. £40. Hints of conifer trees, cinnamon, wood. His brain races ahead, categorising her. Not used to going out. Didn’t pace herself, and now she’s about two shots away from blackout drunk. She’s trying. Probably break-up.

“Well, fuck me,” she sighs, before joining in with smaller, breathless chuckles.

“That’s precisely what I’m trying to avoid,” Sherlock answers, laughing even more. God, it was a great idea to get away from his family. He already feels better.

“Whelp,” she laughs, plopping down on the seat next to him. She holds out her hand. “Sally.”

Sherlock takes it and kisses the back of it, like the gentleman he’s not. “Sherlock.”

“Lestrade,” Lestrade says, leaning over and handing Sherlock a glass of water.

Sherlock hands it to Sally, who wrinkles her nose at it.

“I really don’t think I can drink anymore.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, and shakes it in front of her wordlessly, mindless of the droplets spattering on the floor. Sally takes it, sniffing at it.

She grins, and tosses back the type of swallow that leaves no mystery as to how she got that drunk that quickly.

Lestrade shakes his head at her gulping throat, turning back to Sherlock. “It never ceases to surprise me that they let you in. You look like you’re twelve. Tops.”

Sherlock scoffs. “I’m practically twenty. Besides, it might have been harder if the bouncer had any semblance of sleep in the past week.”

Lestrade snorts pouring some whiskey over a short glass of ice. “You’re eighteen.”

“Closer to nineteen at this point, so-”

“And it doesn’t hurt that you look like the biggest twink this side of the Atlantic.”

Sherlock narrows his eyes, about to argue, but not ready to let go of his good mood. He shrugs like it doesn’t matter. “No, I suppose not.”

A glass slams down in front of him, and Lestrade looks almost impressed with the speed at which it was emptied.

“Thanks,” Sally grins, and a trail of water meanders its way down to her chin.

Lestrade holds out a towel wordlessly.

She holds it up like a salute and wipes the entire bottom half of her face with it, cleaning the water, but smearing her lipstick. Lestrade rolls his eyes, and hands another guy a few seats down a beer.

“So,” he says, “what the hell are you doing here?”

Sherlock groans. “You can’t have expected me to stay there the entire winter break? With all of them suddenly deciding we needed to act like a 'normal family'? Unlike _someone_ I can’t just eat my feelings away.”

Lestrade glares lightly at him. “Mycroft isn’t fat, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s eyes answer his frankly. “Your ridiculous crush on my brother doesn’t change the facts.”

Lestrade shifts forward, mixing a drink that’s a weird salmon colour, cheeks flushing as he answers. “I don’t have a fucking _crush_ on Myc-”

Sally moans loudly, dropping her face down onto the wooden surface of the bar. “ _Fuck_ families.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow tilts up, even as his smile shrinks into a hint of a smirk. “Indeed.”

“Getting a drunk to side with you probably hurts your argument, Sherlock.”

Sally’s head droops up, swinging precariously like it’s no longer attached. “Fuck you, too.”

Lestrade winks at her. “If you like.”

Sally grins up at him. “Shut the fuck up, you complete tosser. I’m way too fucking drunk for this.”

Lestrade raises the finished fruit drink to her as a toast. “And I’m too sober. But,” he adds as he adds a strawberry to the rim and sets it in from of a girl wrapped around one of the ones Sherlock danced with earlier, “you should stay around here. I’m going to take you home in a completely respectable way because you cannot be trusted around car keys. Or cars. Or even cabs, at this point.”

Sally flips him off, and settles in more comfortably. “Fine.”

Sherlock tosses his gaze around the room, and catches the man’s eye again. Shorter, blonde hair, broad shoulders and a broader smile. He’s wearing a button up, jeans, nothing special, and from this distance, with this lighting, Sherlock can’t even tell what colour it is, what brand it is, but fuck if it doesn’t looks amazing on him, anyway.

The man nods at him, and Sherlock shifts in his seat. “Well, _I’m_ not completely pissed, so. This song is speaking to me.”

Lestrade scoffs as he pours another beer into an icy mug.

Sherlock glares back at him. “On a spiritual level.”

A man comes up almost as soon as Sherlock’s feet touch the floor. Tight black shirt, tighter black slacks, dress shoes. Too dressed up for this club. Vain.

“Hi,” he shouts, leaning in and giving Sherlock a smile that’s all teeth. “‘m Victor.”

Sherlock grins back, grabbing his arm and dragging him forward.

“Jean,” he answers, interlacing a French accent into his voice. He releases Victor, jumping alongside the crowd, letting his eyelids drift down until they’re almost closed.

Victor leans in, kissing under his jawline, the corner of his mouth, and anything else he can get his hands on. Sherlock leans back a bit, more into the admittedly terrible music than the man he’s dancing with. He lets the screaming keyboard and high-pitched melody drift away, leaving only the basest form of music. The beat. He jumps, lights flashing around him, like a frame by frame playback, like he’s watching everything on a screen. Victor leans in closer, and Sherlock can smell sweat and cheap cologne.

“Want to go in the back?” Victor asks, right in his ear, and Sherlock’s almost impressed with how he manages to do that when Sherlock still hasn’t stopped his bouncing movements.

“Of course,” Sherlock whispers against his mouth, pulling away at the last second.

Victor follows his mouth, but Sherlock just kept going, winding an arm around his waist instead, resting his body against Victor’s. They don’t talk again until they reach the back hall, the purgatory between the club and the private rooms. The sudden silence is almost as deafening as the music they left behind.

Victor nods at the man standing guard outside the door, and it swings open, revealing smoky rooms separated only by walls reaching Sherlock’s waist.

“Follow me,” Victor says into the top of his head, kissing it lightly. Sherlock does, taking in the room as they walk through it.

There are couples everywhere, making out, laughing, talking quietly. Some of the areas are larger, with more spacious couches, or even beds, but Victor leads Sherlock past all of them.

They reach an open area, with people lazing about all over the place, on the L-shaped couch in the middle of the room, the table in front of it, the floor. The air is thicker here, and Sherlock may be from a posh sort of family, but even he can recognise the smell of weed.

His nose wrinkles of its own accordance. It smells like utter shit.

Victor glances back at him, and laughs. “Not for you?”

Sherlock lets a wry grin show. “Not really, no.”

“Didn’t think so. Hold on a minute.” Victor heads straight for a guy behind a desk in the corner that Sherlock hadn’t even noticed. Money exchanges hands and Sherlock doesn’t even pretend not to stare.

Victor comes back with a thin strip of fabric and two syringes.

“Care for something cleaner?”

Sherlock grins. Heroin has always been his favoured high. Clean, crisp, clear, and all the other adjectives that start with c and remind him of lemon water. He sits down on one of the last pieces of couch to spare, and holds a hand out for his needle, and his arm for Victor to tie it. Victor kneels between his legs, holding onto his arm for support, and Sherlock distantly realises he’s sort of drunk. Can’t be _that_ drunk, though, so it doesn’t matter.

It’s almost frightening how easy it is for him to find his vein.

The high hits him like a freight train, like a slap in his face, and he revels in it. He doesn’t even really feel it when Victor takes the fabric to use on himself, tying it with his teeth. Doesn’t care. His mind is momentarily floating in the air, weightless, before the inevitable free-fall plunge into hyper-awareness it always brings. He’d never admit it, but sometimes Sherlock gets high just to feel the disconnected hovering, not the intense, technicolour view he always says he loves.

He blinks in slow motion, the world sways like he’s on a boat, and then he’s slammed back into reality.

Victor’s kissing his neck. Sherlock tilts his head back, but only because at this new angle, he can see practically every dust particulate, every vaporised piece of marijuana, can almost see, he swears, the atoms of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen making up the heavy air in the room. Victor tries for his mouth, but Sherlock turns away, to absorbed in the feel of the couch under his hands. There’s two tears in an outward arc beneath his fingertips. Boot, most likely, under a leg, then swept out as the owner stood up, ripping the cheap fabric like, well…

Fuck it. Like cheap fabric. Sherlock’s mind can’t quite think in a straight line, can’t quite put into words the million thought in his head, and somehow that makes him laugh, a deep rumbling sound that echoes up his throat.

Victor draws back, and looks fully into his face for the first time. “Shit.”

Sherlock smiles at him. “I thought _fuck_ was more the idea.”

When that doesn’t get a laugh, Sherlock pouts and decides not to tell Victor about the spare shaving cream sitting on his jaw hinge.

“You’re really fucking high. Ah, shit,” Victor repeats. “How heavy are you?”

Sherlock doesn’t blink. “Fifty three kilos.”

Victor’s eyes go round, and Sherlock tries to school his face into something more serious, but Victor’s not even looking at him.

“Shitting fuck shit. Fuck.” Victor’s hand runs over his face. “God damn it.”

Sherlock’s not an idiot, even high. “How much did you think?”

Victor barely looks at him from between his fingers. “Fifty five, about. Jesus _fucking_ christ.”

Sherlock just stares at him, enthralled with the way the slick veneer slides off as Victor rubs a hand through his neatly combed hair, leaving it almost as messy as Sherlock’s.

Victor lets out a harsh breath. “You’ll be fine, I only gave you enough to just barely - Ah, you just… You probably need to get home. This isn’t - You really shouldn’t be out right now. There’re fucking creeps everywhere, and you’re probably too out of it to do anything if they - Yeah, you’ve really got to go home.”

Sherlock stands up, and he’s not sure if he did it on his own, since Victor’s hand is steadying his arm. He’s fine. He just - He feels so _jumpy_. He needs to - He -

Sherlock leans in like he’s telling a secret. “I’m going to find Lestrade.”

Victor looks apprehensive about letting him go, but Sherlock draws himself up and smiles at him beatifically. “I’m fine,” he says. “Lestrade is - He’s my friend. Knows where I’m staying. ‘ll take me. I’ll just-” Sherlock gestures vaguely at the way they came.

The relaxation in Victor’s shoulders tells Sherlock Victor’s going to let him go without argument before Victor’s mouth does, and he turns to leave.

He weaves back through the smoke, and winks at the man at the door on the way out. Makes the wrong turn to get back to the club, which is weird because he thought it was only a short hallway, but when he stops recognising the cuff marks on the wall, he decides to turn back.

He finds the door about ten minutes later, and he still feels like flies are buzzing under his skin.

Sherlock skirts the dance floor, avoiding all possible eye contact, making a beeline for the bar.

An hand touches his arm, and Sherlock’s about to turn and snark at whoever owns it, but when he turns, he sees the man from earlier, and his half-smile is distracting enough to make Sherlock’s mouth stutter.

“Hey,” he says, and his voice is too calm and smooth for the shaking floor and Sherlock’s shaking hands. “I’m John.”

Sherlock is still standing there like an idiot, because his mouth and limbs aren’t cooperating, maybe because he’s still not sure if he wants to lean into the touch, or yank away and head toward Lestrade like he was planning, or it could be that he’s so busy cataloging everything he can about the man, _John_ , because his brain is flying away without the rest of him. Early twenties, second child, popular, not used to dressing up, jumper residue still on in collarbone. It’s the last one that shocks him out of his stupor, though. Med student. Just his luck.

“Sherlock,” he says faintly, realising a second too late that he never gives out his real name.

John grins up at him. “Fits. I like it.”

Sherlock almost laughs because he’s always hated his name, how it made him so different, or at least, more different. “Thanks,” he answers, instead of a million other things, primarily _I think I’m in love with your eyes because they’re the perfect brown_ and _Maybe I’ll learn to like it, too_ and _For god’s sake why couldn’t you’ve found me somewhere else, anywhere else, because I’m as high as a fucking kite right now_.

Maybe he does say them out loud though, because the sharp, predatory observation he’d seen shine in those brown eyes softened to something like concern.

Sherlock feels his hackles rising even though his hands are still vibrating a couple beats per minute faster than the music and his mind can’t focus on one thing longer than a fraction of a second.

“Let’s dance,” he blurts, holding out a hand. He pauses for a half second, but it’s a half second too long, so he grabs John’s hand and drags him to the floor regardless of whether the word forming on John’s still-tilted mouth was an ‘Alright.’

The music is louder in the middle, because the club put the speakers right under them, and John’s still looking at him a little too carefully.

Sherlock smiles at him, leaning in close enough to smell the antiseptic he knew he would.

“I’m fine,” he purrs, lacing his arms around John’s neck. “Dance with me.”

Johns obliges him, snaking his own arms around Sherlock’s waist. “You’re too thin,” he says, breathing into Sherlock’s ear, which shouldn’t be attractive, on any level, but a shiver runs down Sherlock’s back, anyway.

Instead of answering, he leans back, pulling at the confines of John’s arms just to feel them tighten around him. “You play rugby?” he shouts.

John grins at him, holding on as Sherlock finally starts to move along to the music, pausing for a moment before joining him.

“Only on Saturdays.”

Sherlock’s eye roll around in his head at that, and he finds himself dizzier than he intended. He looks up and tries to take a deep enough breath that everything steadies itself. He gets distracted, though, because the ceiling is beautiful, and the patterns above him look like constellations.

“Beautiful,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” John answers, coming in closer, and Sherlock leans in, too, because the constellations look even better swimming in dark brown eyes.

“You didn’t even see them.”

“Didn’t need to,” John answers, turning them in a circle while the crowd surges around them.

Sherlock tilts his head, resting it on John’s shoulder because suddenly it’s much too heavy. His eyes slide shut, and then it’s just his body moving in time with John’s, and his head isn’t filled with all the chatter and traffic it usually is, it’s just a skydive rush and medicinal smells and rugby arms around him. The rest of the room fades away, like when he’s playing his violin, and all he thinks about is a blissful nothing that fills up his head like cotton balls. John feels like home, and Sherlock tries to tell him, but the his mouth is too busy smiling to be bothered with it. The lights flash across his lids, and he can feel his pupils following the beams of their own will, and John’s talking to him.

“-take you to sit down.”

Sherlock follows him because his legs forgot how to walk in a straight line and John’s warm shoulders make his fingertips feel human again.

“I was waiting for you, you know,” Sherlock whispers in his ear as they walk. “You took too long.”

John looks down at him, and Sherlock wonders when he became shorter than him. “I’m sorry,” John says, and part of Sherlock wonders if he's just humouring him, but it seems like he was apologising for more than taking too long to ask him to dance.

“I forgive you,” Sherlock answers, kissing his cheek. Then he draws away. “But not for the stubble.”

That gets a breathless sort of laugh from John, at least, so Sherlock let the silence hang, and stares up at the star ceiling and grins.

A seat slams into his bum, and it feels some kind of familiar. Ah, the bar. “Lestrade.” Sherlock greets, leaning against John, still, from the waist up.

Lestrade ignores him, and Sherlock thinks he’s rude. The bartender turns to John, instead, the complete twat. Their conversation floats lightly over his head, but Sherlock can’t really be arsed to pay attention.

John is still supports his weight, and the words he’s saying echo through his chest more efficiently than the air, vibrating down Sherlock’s arms where they rest lightly across John’s. They’re still around his waist, and Sherlock smiles stupidly down at them for a bit, until they’re not.

“Where’d they go?” he asks Lestrade, who just stares at him with annoying worry tinging the skin around his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he says, before plugging the free ear and lifting a phone to his other.

“Mycroft?”

Sherlock groans and turns his head into John’s shoulder. “No.”

John shifts so their position is more comfortable, and kisses the top of his head. “Hey, it’s alright. I’m going to take you home.”

“Home,” Sherlock laughs because that’s fucking hilarious. _Home_. “No, John. You’re going to take me to my _house_.”

“Right,” John says, staring over his head. Probably trying to find the best route out of there.

Sherlock turns his head up, trying to get his mouth as close to John’s ear as possible. “Hug the wall, then make a straight line through the dance floor in the direct centre. No one wants to dance in the middle of a crowd. Path of least resistance. The door will be about two metres to the left when we get off the floor. Avoid the corner just inside the doorway, though. Prime make out spot. It will get disgusting.”

John looks down at him in surprise, and Sherlock grins back, letting his canines indent on his bottom lip. “Hello, John.”

“Hi,” John answers, looking like he’s reevaluating his perceptions.

“Yeah,” Lestrade breaks in. “Smartest brat you’ll ever meet. Complete arsehole, though. You got off lucky, even with this.” Lestrade gestures to Sherlock’s vague vicinity, even as he must know he’ll pay for that later. Sherlock just glares at him for now, and scoffs.

“Let’s go, John,” he says, standing. John doesn’t comment on how most of his weight is still evenly distributed between his legs and John’s.

“Sure,” John says, turning to Lestrade one last time. “Thanks.”

Lestrade lifts the bottle of vodka he’s pouring from and nods.

Sherlock’s arm makes its home back around John’s waist, and John’s settles around his shoulders.

John makes an irritated noise, and snakes his arm beneath Sherlock’s. “Works better like this.”

Sherlock leans more heavily on John, and he’s right. With Sherlock’s arm around his shoulders John can more easily support Sherlock. Of course. Sherlock knew that.

“Sure you did,” John grunts, pausing at the edge of the dance floor. “Ready?”

Sherlock sways, standing on his own two feet. “When you are.”

They dash across the floor, and end up breathlessly laughing when they clear the other side. Each looks around for the other, and their eyes find each others like the magnets Sherlock had when he was little. He could place them at opposite end of a table, and they’d always just attract each other back again. _Clack_. Sherlock walks toward John, and John closes his distance just as quickly.

“Clack,” Sherlock whispers.

John grins at him, and they’re breathing each others air like they’re dying men. “You’re high,” John says, not unregretfully.

“Not that high,” Sherlock says, leaning in, smiling back like he had nothing to lose.

John’s head swoops down, peppering a few kisses up Sherlock’s neck, his cheek, the corner of his mouth, then a light, chaste one on his lips. “High enough. Come on.”

He grabs Sherlock’s hand, and they dash out the door, Sherlock watching the air in front of him swaying like he’s on a boat. He decides to just stare at John’s back, the one constant, and his world rights itself as much as he could expect it to.

They escape into a cab, and their laughter seems obscenely loud in the empty street outside. Sherlock doesn’t care, and John’s too occupied trying to keep them both vertical to wonder at it.

“Baker Street,” Sherlock says, before John can talk.

John scoffs out an “I don’t think so,” but Sherlock holds up a hand. “If I’ve got to deal with my brother and the rest of my family, I’m doing it sober. I’m just going to sleep at my brother's flat while he's at my parents' house. Relax.”

John looks anything but, but he settles in next to Sherlock, anyway, a little too close for strangers, but Sherlock needed something to prop himself up, so.

The cab ride passes like a dream. The window’s like a television screen, and the lights pass in lightning strike colours. Red, blue, white, yellow, but when Sherlock turns back for a moment to look at John, all he can see it the navy blue musical quality of the air in front of John’s mouth while he talks. He swears he can see the vibrations.

“-not what I had in mind when I set out tonight."

Sherlock latches on to the tail end of John’s exasperated tone, and revels in the fond notes in it before sighing. “Me neither, but,” he shrugs looking directly into the air right in front of John’s eyes. “I’m, ah. I’m sorry about this, by the way. I’m not normally-”

“High?”

Sherlock laughs. “Yeah.”

“But,” John says, letting his head fall back against the seat, “you’re still a dick.”

Sherlock shrugs again, liking the movement. “Yes.”

John sighs, and stares up at the roof of the cab. It’s filthy.

“But,” Sherlock continues, because the silence was eating at his nerves. “I have many redeeming qualities.”

John’s head swings down so his neck’s at an awkward angle, but at least he could see Sherlock’s earnest expression. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yes.” Sherlock adjust his position so he’s more upright. “Many.”

“How many?”

Sherlock squints at the flashing police lights that fly by them. “Eight.”

John’s eyes are saucers. “Wow. Eight.”

A hum travels up his throat, and Sherlock turns his narrowed eyes to John. “Sarcasm.”

“Mm. Yes.” John says.

The silence reigns again, but this time, Sherlock’s too enamoured with the play of headlights spanning across, then disappearing from, John’s face to be uncomfortable.

John clears his throat. “Go on, then. Impress me.”

Sherlock stops watching how the Tesco sign makes the John’s chin look cool blue, and forehead look like it’s blushing long enough to let out a noisy sigh.

He hold up his fingers in front of him. “Never ask you for help with anything intellectual.” Sherlock begins ticking off his fingers. “I can play violin, mostly beautifully. But then - Well. I can play it. And then there’s the fact that nothing you do will be more morally ambiguous than what I’ve done, so. Perks of me: you’ll be the righteous one. And I _look_ gay, even Lestrade noticed when we first met, and if _he_ noticed, well. Well. So there’ll never be any awkward, girl-hitting-on-you-and-then-you-have-to-explain-you’re-with-me moments that I know you’ll hate. Because they’ll _know_. Even the stupid ones. I also make tea. Sometimes. And,” Sherlock gestures as wide as he can in his two breaths of space. “I know people at Bart’s. Saint Bartholomew’s Hospital. Yes. When you get a job there, I can bring you lunch and scare off the nurses. Plus, my family’s irritatingly well-off, so I can always pay for dinner. As a med school student, I doubt you have funds to spare. I will always be able to predict what you want for Christmas.”

John was already shaking his head at the second one, and by the end he was laughing. “Looking gay isn’t even a perk, christ, Sherlock. Doesn’t count. And being shady doesn’t either, you know. That’s like saying to date someone you find unattractive so you’ll be the pretty one. Nope. _And_ I’m enlisting, Mr. Smartest-Dick-I’ll-Ever-Meet Detective. No Bart’s for me. What is that, three? Oh, and we’d have to trade. On dates. You pay, I pay, and so on. I’m not helpless.”

Sherlock stares at John for a while, then shoves his back into John’s chest, staring out the window balefully. John still manages to laugh around a mouthful of hair.

Sherlock draws a magnifying glass in the condensation on the window. He scoffs. “Detective.”

John kisses the area right under Sherlock’s ear. “Detective.”

Sherlock shifts into it, and sighs. “Okay, four.”

John puffs a short chuckle into Sherlock’s hair, mussing it for a blink. “And everyone can make tea. And maybe I _like_ being asked questions. And what do you even mean, ‘mostly’ beautiful? What the hell do you do when it’s not? Actually, no, never mind. Don’t want to know. And you know what? I’d love for you to completely botch my Christmas present. Get me socks or a book I’d never read or a horribly ugly jumper that I’ll still wear because you got it for me.”

For some inexplicable reason, Sherlock finds that important, and he’ll blame the high until the day he dies, but he’s nearly in tears. “You’d wear the jumper?” he whispers.

John laughs, tightening his arms around Sherlock. “Every day for a week.”

“And then?”

“And then it will have an unfortunate accident with the fire place.”

Sherlock kisses the arm closest to his face. “I think I want to marry you.”

John laughs, and the car slows down. “I think I want a first date first.”

Sherlock sway into John’s space, and his favourite arm in the entire world comes back around his waist. “John, would you like to get coffee?”

“No,” John deadpans, laughing at Sherlock’s stiffening expression. “I’m joking. It’s two. In the morning. If we get coffee we’ll never sleep and I’ve an exam tomorrow that I was avoiding studying for.”

“A doctor exam?” Sherlock asks, searching his pockets for the key.

“Oh, yeah, complicated stuff,” John says, grabbing the key from him after the third attempt to open the door fails.

“Neurosurgery?”

“History of Theatre.”

Sherlock laughs, surprised by the noise. When he realises it’s from his own mouth, he laughs again, stumbling inside the doorway.

He turns back when John doesn’t follow.

“John?”

John leans on the doorframe, looking at Sherlock like he’s about to apologise.

Sherlock cuts him off, dipping forward precariously for a kiss. Their mouths mash together sloppily, and John tastes like beer and some chips he’d eaten earlier, and he smells like hospital and the colour burgundy and Sherlock needs it, all of it. John’s tongue seems to draw itself forward of its own free will, and Sherlock opens his mouth greedily. He makes a helpless sort of noise in the back of his throat, and John’s hands come up to cup his face, stroking his jaw gently, coaxing him to give up, give in, and Sherlock doesn’t know to what, exactly, but he does.

When John draws away, Sherlock’s mouth follows his, but too late.

“I have to go,” John whispers against his lips, and Sherlock shivers involuntarily.

“Please,” he says, leaning in and feeling desperate and not caring. “Please don’t.”

John leans forward, and Sherlock thinks he’s won, but he’s being lightly forced into the hall, and John is turning away.

Sherlock doesn’t even have the presence of mind to ask his number, or even his last name.

He can’t remember getting into bed, but when he wakes up the next morning, the stale taste in his mouth goads him into stumbling his way to the bathroom.

* * *

 

When he looks into the mirror, the bruises under his eyes are more prevalent than ever, and he looks a little feral.

It’s not until he looks at his own eyes that a flash of warm brown comes back to him.

He runs to back to his room, through the door, down the stairs, out the door.

Sherlock’s standing in the middle of a London Street in the dark purple dress shirt he wore the night before, hair a mess, eyes wild when he realises he can’t even remember the man’s name, the one who he’s trying to convince himself that he shouldn’t miss. He doesn’t even know him.

But all he can see is brown, brown eyes and a sideways grin.


End file.
